Is the government choosing winners and losers?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 March 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

Washington is doubling down on the industries it wants to see grow. From semiconductor chips to lithium-ion batteries, we trace where the money is going and why. And which part's got the European Union all bent outta shape.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:12.5	When something is important to you and you want to see it grow, what do you do?
0:17.0	Do you stand back, watch it, stop and start, learning to stand on its own two feet in the
0:22.6	process?
0:23.6	Or do you step in, offer a hand, help it out.
0:28.3	Social policy is all about stepping in.
0:31.2	It's about supporting industries that are considered strategically important.
0:34.8	It's when the government might do things like restrict trade or subsidize industries,
0:40.3	it might add tax credits, it might spend on research and development.
0:44.8	And after falling out of favor in policy circles for decades, Donald Trump's trade war is
0:49.6	followed by huge spending from the Biden administration, are signaling that industrial policy is back.
0:57.9	This is the indicator from planet money, I'm Whelan Wong.
1:27.9	The indicator of the week, industrial policy edition, we've got a very industrious colleague here,
1:34.5	Jeff Wodeiga.
1:36.5	Today I want to talk about one of the Biden administration's big moves toward industrial policy.
1:42.0	My indicator of the week is $39 billion.
1:45.6	That is how much money the government is going to spend to bring microchip factories back to the US.
1:51.0	Right, so this is part of the chips act that we heard about last year.
1:54.5	Exactly right, and applications for this money just opened up this week.
1:58.6	And the idea is they want big companies like Intel, like TSMC, in Taiwan, like Samsung.
2:05.7	They want these big companies to apply for these subsidies and use that money to build
2:09.6	cutting-edge chip factories.
	...

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